Nature Lovers Will Adore San Quintin, Baja California!

This looks really loose. I'm not sure that we should be doing this but I don't know how to get out of it at this point. Hi we're Mel and Jay. Together with our cat Benny we're traveling the Baja Peninsula all the way to Cabo and back. This is the story of our adventure in San Quintin where we climb a volcano, kayak the wetlands, and struggle getting out of camp. Yeah I just went inside. Looks really nice inside. Woman there speaks perfect English. Said it was 100 a night and we can choose any of these spots right in front of us. We've been away from civilization for a while so we're here just outside of San Quintin doing a resource refresh. Just emptying the last of our water into the tank. We're here at a nice RV spot where we actually have a place that we can dump. Perfecto. The San Quintin area has a long history dating back to pre-Columbian times when it was first inhabited by indigenous groups many of whom were converted to Christianity in the 16th century when the Spanish arrived. San Quintin became an important agricultural region and is known today for its production of strawberries, tomatoes, and grapes. It's also a destination for outdoor enthusiasts offering activities such as kayaking, hiking, fishing, and bird watching. Well this is the beach that's kind of a short walk from the campground. I imagine if it was sunny and warm this would be a perfect place to take a dip but that's not going to happen today. The google reviews of the restaurant at Cielito Lindo were far higher than any other place in the area so we had to see what the hype was about. Not only was the food delicious and portions huge but we had a wonderful service and the prices were great. We shared the queso tacos, a side of fries, and they brought us chips and salsa, soup, and strawberries too. Needless to say we left happily stuffed. I think it was really nice staying here at Cielito Lindo if i pronounce that correctly. It was great to be able to dump our tanks. Yeah, get a refresh. It's not French. Now we're off to adventure. Yes, so we are staying within this kind of region for the next few days. We are going a little bit more to the coast though. There's some hikes, volcanoes, riverbeds that lead to the ocean. We appear to have reached a roadblock. What do you think? Can we get through? I think this guy's coming to figure things out for us. Oh he's gonna let us through. And our tires are like covered in mud. I think this is the muddiest place we've been on this whole trip. Well this is looking like a very cool area. I just want to see which road is best. It splits off into three different roads and they're all kind of iffy. I kind of think in the middle one. This happens a lot with these dirt roads that they just kind of push through. They kind of split off and you're not sure which one is best. That's kind of scary. Yeah, maybe I will go four low. This looks really loose. I'm not sure that we should be doing this, but I don't know how to get out of it at this point. It's going downhills. Yeah, but we have to get back up. Yeah, this is very soft. I have a bad feeling about getting back up this. All right, we made it down. I'm just gonna go to the top of that hill and see what I can see. All right, as it turns out, not all of the pathways are marked on google maps and it's not always clear that you're on the correct path. The challenge is that we're towing a trailer behind us. Otherwise this would be like, no problem, turn around, easy peasy. Straight maybe. Am I straight right now? No. Okay, now you're kind of straight. Keep going. Okay, stop. And that's how you do it. There are in fact two restaurants here. Morisco's Campo Don Alvaro on the left and Morisco's Alvaro's La Cochera on the right. On our first night we tried Morisco's Campo Don Alvaro and the fish tacos and ceviche were very tasty. Today we are going to hike up a volcano. That volcano. It's in the Punta Mazo Nature Reserve. It's supposed to be a fairly easy hike. Yeah we were told it's about a half hour to get to the base of the trail and then a half hour up and then a half hour down and then a half hour back. I had to put my plaid back on. It's feeling nice and warm up by the trailer but man, get down here by the water and that sea breeze is chilling. While we're getting away from the water again, I'm getting hot again. Always got to dress in layers for hikes like this. So we're about to climb the Sudoeste Volcano. Volcan Sudoeste. Now this little pathway seems to be going back to the road so I think we missed something. Where are we? Oh but we did miss. Somehow we did miss a potential turnoff. We're going to backtrack a little just so we don't have to walk around the entire mountain. How did we miss this? So it was literally the sign. Right beside the sign was the trail and we just kept walking like idiots. Talk about being an observant. All right we found the path. We're on it. How did we miss that? Well we were looking at the big path. So we're just on the little hill beside the volcano and we've already got like really awesome views. Oh yeah you can see the wetlands over here with the snaking kind of river and all the little flowers here on the hillside. And my favorite these like huge succulent looking things. Pretty steep on this ridge. Don't look down. Do you remember how many volcanoes are supposed to be in this region? There's that one there. Yeah that's two, three. I think all these hills. Four, five. Are all volcanoes. Man look at that view behind me though. Geez that's epic. All right last step. We're at the top. This is cool. What a beautiful view. Oh my gosh. That beach looks awesome. So if you don't have a big rig like we do and you have four by four and you're raised, you can actually drive the road along here and camp down here near that beach. And this right behind me is the caldera of the volcano. You can see how it goes right down into that kind of conical center. Holy crap I didn't even notice that. It's so big that it's like it just looked like a hill to me. So it must have blown out in that direction. That direction yeah. It kind of looks like we're gonna walk right off the edge here. The wetlands here are really cool. They kind of snake. The little rivers snake in and out. It almost looks like an amazon rainforest on a mini scale. It's really cool. So I'm glad we didn't come through here with our truck. There's kind of some big dunes. It's very loose. I don't think the truck would make it over this dune. I question whether I'm gonna make it over this dune. This night we decided to try the second restaurant and we were sad to hear that they were all out of fish tacos. However it's a good thing because it forced us to try something new and the shrimp tacos and quesadilla turned out to be amazing. We don't eat shrimp a lot normally but these had us wanting more. Today's our last full day in the San Quintin area so we're going to go check out an area called Las Humedales which just means wetlands. So this is one of the main Humedales areas and we feel like we might even be able to get the kayak in here. All right this is a very delicate operation here. Don't get your shoes wet. Well I'm trying to. Oh you're rinsing your... A little bit wet to get the mud off. Yeah you got that? Got the bag. Okay I'm trying a different method than Jay. I'm straddling the boat. All right ready? Yep. Oh I did a sit and a push off all at once. I think the tide is going out. This could uh be a bit of an issue. This could end badly for us. I guess we kind of forgot to check the tide tables before coming. This is really really cool because you're basically just following this path through the wetlands and it just winds you along. It's really neat. All right we've turned around but we're having some troubles. It's a raging river now. Yeah it's really uh a bit of a battle. It's getting more shallow as we go. We can feel our rudder dragging a little bit and I don't recall it dragging on the way out. So that was a tough paddle back. All right I'll pull you in. So although this is not our last stop it's just occurred to us that this might actually be the last beach where we can swim. I'm okay with that and not getting in the water. Jay is not okay with that and so he's going for a dip. Final dip. Give Mel the towel. There you go. Thank you. Use that to stay warm. I'm gonna have to go quite a ways I think because it's shallow. This is as far as I go because the water is coming too close. 15 degrees celsius. That's really cold. You're actually gonna swim in that? All right. It's back up to 20. He's in and that looks softly cold and yet he's oh there he goes again. That is just madness folks. Pure and utter madness. I actually felt pretty comfortable that time. I don't think that lady over there agrees. All right we are pulling out of San Quintin but we've got one challenge left which is to get up the hill that we came down on. But there are three options. Well we're choosing the one on the right that's the kind of the shortest the smoothest and a little bit of soft sand but not like really really soft like the middle one. And I don't know I figure if we make the wrong choice if we get stuck we can at least back out of it because we'll have all the weight behind us. That sounds scary. Well and I mean that's just my theory. Maybe it'll push in and dig in and we'll be stuck and not be able to go anywhere. But we're going for right. All right trailer right. He just needs to come back a little bit further and then we'll be lined up for this road. All right here goes attempt number two. The good road. But man this is bumpy. Right Benny? Yeah Benny doesn't love it. Looking for somewhere to go. Be sure to catch us next week when we go to Ensenada. We'll see you then. All right. Oh I was gonna say. Oh you're gonna say it? Okay. Wait I can't hear you. Make sure you don't miss the next video by liking subscribing and turning on notifications. Oh and don't forget to check out our website and sign up for our weekly email blast. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you in the next one.